Doc: Time to move UC basketball downtown

If Bearcats can find money to make Nippert sexy, U.S. Bank Arena shouldn't be such a chore

Jun. 26, 2013

U.S. Bank Arena (far right) nags at the edge of our riverfront resurgence. It’s on the fringe of what has become a spectacular playground for local fans of sports and drinking. / The Enquirer/Gary Landers

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The University of Cincinnati says it has the money to doll up Ol’ Gal Nippert. Luxury suites, club seats, an indoor lounge and enough left over to bring the restrooms out of the Middle Ages. The renovation will take the dowager stadium from “quaint’’ to “charming’’. Ask a realtor what a difference that makes.

Raising the sex appeal of the Bearcats football stadium was the school’s first sports priority. Now, it can focus on another:

The Shoemaker Center/Fifth Third Arena has never been as good as the teams it has housed, especially when UC was a March fixture. Its drawbacks have been elaborated upon fully. It wasn’t built to be just a gym. The estimated cost to update the building is higher than the cost was to build it. In a manner of speaking, The Shoe is totaled.

Time to take the city game back downtown.

U.S. Bank Arena nags at the edge of our riverfront resurgence. It’s on the fringe of what has become a spectacular playground for local fans of sports and drinking. Instead of spreading the wealth with a baseball park at Broadway, we chose to have SportsWorld on the river. And now, BeerWorld as well.

U.S. Bank is the last riverfront resident needing new shoes and a tummy tuck. Renovation would add a tenant and make the place suitable for NCAA championships that right now, wouldn’t pass through the turnstiles without a court order and a can of Lysol.

The building isn’t as grimy as it once was. You can go there without being vaccinated. But its concourses are narrow, its lighting is gloomy, its locker rooms are substandard and its media readiness is zero. It hasn’t hosted anything of national sports significance since the Women’s Final Four in 1997. “It’s an older, smaller venue,’’ says Jackie Reau, board chairman of the Cincinnati Sports Corporation.

Meantime, University of Dayton Arena just hosted the first weekend of the Madness, and annually has the tournament’s First Four. Dayton has had the expertise and deep pockets to stay a step ahead of Cincinnati. UD Arena is a nice place. The people in charge are good at their jobs. Attendance ranges from great to sardine-packed.

But it’s Dayton.

We’re being outdone by Dayton.

If UC can find the money to make Nippert sexy, convincing partners to help pay for the doll-ification of homely U.S. Bank Arena shouldn’t be such a chore.

“We’d love to have them,’’ said Ray Harris, the arena’s chief financial officer. “We have reached out to them (but) we haven’t gotten any indication from UC that’s what they want to do.’’

I tried unsuccessfully several times this week to reach UC athletic director Whit Babcock. Moving downtown makes too much sense to be ignored, especially if the cost to UC is lessened. Harris estimated it would take between $80 million and $100 million to make the arena competitive with other regional palaces, such as the Yum! Center in Louisville. He talked generally of expanding the building “over top of the current plaza. To generate the amenities, we’d need more space. But the infrastructure is already there.’’

Believe what you want. Imagining U.S. Bank as Yum! is a bit much. But it’s a 17,500-seat building, unattractive and underused, just waiting to for some fiscal cosmetic surgery. “Real opportunity there,’’ Reau said.

She went to NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis Wednesday, to get a better sense of what championships Cincinnati could bid for, and what the arena requirements would be. The entertainment aspect is covered. If you can’t have fun at The Banks now, your heart isn’t working.

Harris noted, “The more expansion done down there, the more people they need down there. We put half a million people (in the arena) last year.’’

As with lots of issues involving vision, we tend to sit and watch other towns chase greatness. Cities around us have seized the moment and aggressively attracted entertainment. We are content with hosting kids soccer tournaments. Our “heads and beds’’ philosophy is better suited to smaller cities with lesser aspirations.

The dynamics of attending games have changed. The games aren’t enough now. They’re part of an “experience.’’ An on-campus gym is nice, in a 1950s kind of way. But games there aren’t going to attract 13,000 paying customers consistently. A gym close to a nice place to eat before the game, and a nice place to drink afterwards, just might.